European Policy, Government Surveillance
CDT Europe Coordinates Letter from Public Interest Technologists Urging the EU for an Evidenced-Based Approach to Child Protection Online
Today, a group of over 30 leading academics and public interest technologists from across Europe wrote an open letter – published by Politico and coordinated by CDT Europe – urging European Parliament members and EU countries to listen to their expertise on encryption and artificial intelligence and consider a complete overhaul the draft EU law on child sexual abuse online.
The experts expressed deep concern at the proposal, in particular its impact on child rights and democracy more broadly. They highlighted the technical infeasibility of the proposal and how the pervasive monitoring it would introduce would result in imprecise scanning and errors that would have serious implications for those involved. Methods such as hashing and machine learning to detect malicious content are seriously limited. The experts also confirmed that the proposal as drafted would break end-to-end encryption.
